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Talk:Muffin (Morrowind)
Easter Egg It's the only muffin in the game (or any main series Elder Scrolls game for that matter). It serves no relevance to quests and it's never commented upon or referenced, and they only way you'd know it exists is by pickpocketing or killing one very specific guard of an otherwise unextraordinary plantation. Does that not meet the criteria of an Easter egg? Tastefulnoodz (talk) 21:54, December 3, 2018 (UTC) :No. Blademaster Jauffre (talk) 18:12, December 4, 2018 (UTC) ::#an unexpected or undocumented feature in a piece of computer software or on a DVD, included as a joke or a bonus. ::#an intentional inside joke, hidden image, or secret feature of a work. :: Look, I don't enjoying butting heads over such a trivial matter, but frankly I'm 100% in the right. This is very clearly an intentional hidden feature of the game as a joke. It couldn't be anything else. I've stated time and again my reasoning and have been met only with invalid definitions and non-answers. It's listed as an easter egg in both the Imperial Library and The Unofficial ESP wiki, so I guess everyone else is just wrong and stupid? Or is there some unspoken rule about being unnecessarily pedantic and contrarian just for the sake of it? Tastefulnoodz (talk) 17:20, December 5, 2018 (UTC) :::Jauffre, please try to explain your reasoning instead of giving one-word answers. :::The Imperial Library has the following description of the muffin on their easter egg page (it says that it was added in 2010, but it is actually from 2005; TIL has changed addresses a few times): ::: "Directly north of Vivec City is the Gro-Bagrat Plantation, where an Orc named Gakkenfeld has the one muffin to rule them all, one muffin to find them, one muffin to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. Oh, sorry, I got a little carried away. What I was saying was that this Orc has the only muffin in the game and, if you love muffins, you should know that Gakkenfeld is quite safe to kill. Too bad the muffin has the same properties as bread." :::This is very tongue-in-cheek. I'm not sure why they included it as an Easter egg, because it is not actually referencing anything else (the description makes it seems as though it's a nod to LotR, but it isn't). The author of this article seems to have focused on the muffin because it is amusing, not because it has any special meaning. :::The UESP has the following line about the muffin on their Easter egg article: ::: "Gakkenfeld, an Orc living on Gro-Bagrat Plantation, is the possessor of the only muffin in Vvardenfell. This muffin, while unique, has the same properties as bread." :::This was actually originally added in 2006: it was a direct quote from TIL's entry on the subject. This pretty much invalidates the UESP as corroboration for the classification of the muffin as an Easter egg; the claim rests, for the most part, on The Imperial Library. Although we have been known to reference some of TIL's pages on our articles, this particular one does not actually show any outside connection. It is just a muffin. :::The existence of this item is somewhat strange, perhaps, but there are a lot of unique items in TES games that have no special meaning attached to them; they were simply created, for whatever reason, as clutter. If we were to categorize the muffin as an Easter egg, we would have to do the same for pretty much every item that is a little bit out of place, and at that point any article we would have on Easter eggs would be pretty useless to readers. —Atvelonis (talk) 18:19, December 5, 2018 (UTC) :::: But an Easter egg doesn't necessarily need to have a cultural connection, be a reference to another work or contain a special meaning. Take the Secret Cow level from Diablo II. It isn't a reference to anything outside of the games, it's just an inside-joke thrown in for perceptive players to discover. I know humor is subjective, but I think muffin, just as a word, is funny. The fact that theirs only one of these sugary breakfast pastries and it's owned by a orc warrior working for the Camonna Tong crime syndicate is hilarious. But most importantly, it's hidden. Morrowind's developers hand-placed these objects into the game world for people to discover, and if there other objects you feel meet the same criteria then why not at least bring them up, either to support your case or put up for consensus? :::: I'm not arguing that it's uniqueness alone makes it suitable to be a Easter egg, poison is also rare but it has no contextual qualities outside of that, but I could also use this reasoning just as easily to remove "A Dying Man's Last Words" or Meteor Slime from the Easter Egg category as well. I might also add that rarity isn't necessarily itself a condition; dwemer pipes and copies of "N'Gasta! Kvata! Kvakis!" aren't rare but have a hidden translated meanings that certainly qualify. I'm not sure how UESP quoting TIL's page invalidates the collaborative claim; but the point is moot: different people looked at the same thing and arrived at the same conclusion regardless. :::: Most importantly, I think readers go onto game wikis specifically looking for easter eggs are interested in weird/funny hidden things to be found in the game and relegating the worlds only muffin to "Morrowind: Ingredients | Morrowind: Alchemy" seems to me atleast to be doing a disservice to them. There's never going to be any hard or fast rule when it comes to what applies or doesn't apply, but I trust that the scenario of "every item that is a little bit out of place" being added to the category will most likely never come to fruition, and preparing for that contingency by removing genuine articles from the categories they belong to is counterproductive. As of currently there are only 20 entries in Morrowind: Easter Eggs so it's hardly bloated; if anything is incomplete because their are still ones from Tribunal and Bloodmoon that have yet to be included yet. It's for these reasons above that I move to add "Muffin" to "Morrowind: Easter Eggs". Tastefulnoodz (talk) 22:02, December 5, 2018 (UTC) :::::I don't really disagree with you, insofar as something without a specific allusory purpose (not necessarily a cultural reference, mind you) can be "hidden" in a work and can therefore still be considered an Easter egg of sorts, but that isn't the definition of Easter eggs that we use on this wiki. That is too broad and too subjective for the encyclopedia. One of our tenets as a wiki is the avoidance of original research; the inclusion of an Easter eggs page to begin with is already seriously pushing this guideline, but it is permitted because we only include Easter eggs that are obviously Easter eggs; i.e. not things that could easily have been misinterpreted by players. :::::I recognize the slight absurdity/weirdness of the muffin's placement in the game, but we have no evidence to indicate that it was done with the intention of being weird/hidden/an Easter egg. It just as easily could have been an arbitrary decision. "There are not enough pastries in this game. Let me add another one before release." You cannot assume that it was added with the intent of creating an Easter egg based solely on the apparent humor of the word "muffin" (this is just your own opinion, and is not really evidence) and the fact that it is unique. There are many items in TES which exist arbitrarily; there is absolutely nothing remarkable about the Necromantic Staff, for instance. It is just a staff. I could speculate that its hidden/unobtainable nature means that Bethesda is treating it like an Easter egg, but there are so many other items in the games like this that that is unlikely to be true. Even if it happened to be true that it was supposed to be an Easter egg, without something concrete to back up this analysis, it would still be considered speculation to state this (because we could not possibly know that it was the truth without a certain amount of evidence). In the same sense, any Easter egg-esque qualities that the muffin may appear to hold are byproducts of the opinions of players ("this word is funny and it is out of place, so it feels like an Easter egg") rather than a result of legitimate evidence that would indicate its status in this regard. :::::I'm afraid I don't quite understand why you are bringing up A Dying Man's Last Words. The book is signed "Indie" and its placement (and that of surrounding objects) suggests a connection to the Indiana Jones film series. Several lines within the book are obviously references: "I have retrieved artifacts and fine treasures that were thought to be myth. From chalices of origins long lost..." (the Holy Grail), "I shall miss my father. Like me, he was also a man of adventure. I followed in his footsteps, though I was blessed with far more luck than he" (Indy's father being interested in archaeology; the quote "fortune and glory"), "At least I am spared any more jokes about my childhood pet" (his name is derived from that of his childhood dog), "And my students" (he was a professor), "I am accompanied by my trusty leather, my steel, and most of all, my token hat" (he carried a whip and a gun, and wore a distinctive hat). This is undoubtedly an Easter egg; players are clearly intended to search through this book to find the connections. As the trivia section on the Meteor Slime page notes, it is a reference to Maniac Mansion. There is no reason to remove either of them. N'Gasta! Kvata! Kvakis! could also be considered an Easter egg due to its use of Esperanto, something that does not fit into the world of TES in any way. :::::My point about the UESP was that they did not come up with the muffin Easter egg independently. The reason it is on their site is because they lifted the information from TIL years ago without doing the analysis that we are presently doing to determine whether it actually belongs. My experience on wikis would lead me to believe that it has remained on the page until now simply because no one has bothered to think about it, not because it has an actual reason to be there. :::::In regards to your final paragraph, in a more theoretical sense, any amount of superfluous categorization is considered to be "bloating" said category. It does not matter if it is one page or twenty; if something does not belong in a category, it should not be placed in one. This issue is of course exacerbated when there are a lot of miscategorized pages, which is why I brought it up earlier, but overcategorization is undesirable no matter the quantity of pages in question. So it is not valid to argue, "But it's just one page!" in this context. The and Discussions exist for the purpose of speculating beyond encyclopedic boundaries and are a more appropriate place to discuss possible Easter eggs such as this. —Atvelonis (talk) 18:06, December 7, 2018 (UTC)